DOD announces Army general officers’ moves in Europe

Brig. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, commander of the Joint Multinational Training Command headquartered in Grafenwoehr, Germany, has been tapped to be the deputy commanding general/chief of staff of U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Germany.

U.S. Army photo

Brig. Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, has been tapped to be the commander of the Joint Multinational Training Command, headquartered in Grafenwoehr, Germany.

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The Defense Department has tapped an 82nd Airborne Division deputy commander to head the Joint Multinational Training Command, which is headquartered in Grafenwöhr, Germany.

Brig. Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the All Americans’ deputy commanding general for operations, will replace Brig. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, a former enlisted man who has been named to take over as deputy commanding general and chief of staff of U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army, headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The post of USAREUR deputy is currently held by Maj. Gen. Richard Longo who, with his wife, Dianne, is “retiring this summer to Park City, Utah,” USAREUR said in a statement Wednesday.

Piatt, a former commandant of the U.S. Army’s infantry school and deputy commander for support of the 10th Mountain Division, is expected to take over from Longo sometime this summer.

That is also when Cavoli is slated to take command of JMTC, the U.S. Army’s largest training command outside the U.S., which includes two large training areas where Europe-based U.S. Army units have trained for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The facilities also host various NATO and friendly foreign military units.

Cavoli will take over in the midst of workforce reductions meant to bring the training command’s capacity in line with a smaller force. Since 2012, the Army’s ground combat power in Europe has been reduced by half.

“Now we do have a sizable mission to support multinational training, and although that has not necessarily gone down as much, it has gone down” because the war in Afghanistan is winding down, JMTC chief of staff Col. Adam Loveless said in an interview with Stars and Stripes in February.

A round of personnel cuts announced by USAREUR last month includes the elimination of 83 military, nine U.S. civilian and 114 local national civilian employee positions from the JMTC.